The Sackrider Family Blog

For God so loved the world, he gave sold His only begotten son Nintendo Wii… What??? I’m not a Walmart hater, but their latest commercial sums up the season in a single phrase:

Christmas costs less at Walmart

Only this year it cost one 34 year old man his life (read more about that here).  Every year I rail against the commercialization of Christmas, this year is no different.  Do we really need to “Buy Christmas”???  How much money have you spent on Christmas?  How much of that did you put on a credit card?  How much of your current credit card balances are from last Christmas?  Don’t tell me the economy is bad – Black Friday sales were up over 3% over last year, that’s over 10.5 BILLION in sales! (click here for source)

People say that Christmas is the season of giving, but that’s not what their actions declare – its the season of getting.  We get things for our family, we get things for our friends, we get things for ourselves, but we don’t give.  I’ve said this before and gotten many comments from people who disagree with me, mostly in the defense of their ‘gift giving’ habits – but I still believe we treat Christmas the same way we treat Halloween – no religious purpose, no religious intent, just another vacation day with a theme.

The funny thing is, people who refuse to celebrate Halloween are treated as religious zealots, and people that don’t celebrate Santa as part of their Christmas tradition, as bad parents.  My pastor talked about living in a Kingdom Culture this morning – a culture that fosters the Gospel.  As I look at the American culture, I see that we have so completely bought into the idea of a secular public life and a private religious life – a kind of separation of Church and State, with state being any area of our life outside of the four walls of our church.

I don’t really mind how we celebrate Independence Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, or Thanksgiving.  I couldn’t care less how you celebrate President’s Day or New Year’s Eve.  But we seem for forget that as Christians, in the mix of historic dates and important celebrations, we have two truly Holy Day’s, Resurrection Sunday and Christmas.  When Easter is about bunnies and chocolate, Christmas about Santa and electronics – we’ve all but abandoned our faith.

A good friend of mine once preached a sermon titled “When Worlds Colloid”.  The point as I remember it was to tear down the walls of seperation keeping our faith from the rest of our life; a message that I think belongs in our pulpits this time of year more than any.  How many of those stampeding Walmart shoppers were Christians?  How many of them were living in the American Culture instead of the Kindom Culture?  Lets just hope they all got the door buster deals they were praying for – we all know that Christmas costs less at Walmart.

Happy Hanukkah!

Just out of high school, I went to World Harvest Bible College (a two year school) with the intention of going straight into ministry from there.  A lot of things happened while I was in bible college, but when I graduated, the youth Pastor of World Harvest Church asked if I would continue as a volunteer / intern for another year.  I was running a drama team with over twenty kids at the time, which is larger than many entire youth groups and I felt there was a lot I could still learn so I agreed.  Three months later, the youth pastor was no longer with the church and I was working at Safelite Autoglass as a terminal repair man and printer cleaner.

Here we are, ten years later – I’m still not in full time ministry, but I am ten years into an IT career.  Not the path I thought I was destined to take; God’s ways are higher than our ways.  I have been blessed in my career but its always bothered me that I never got a four year degree.  I went to community college in Ohio, taking a few classes, but to be honest, I realized I was taking out student loans, sacrificing time with my family, and taking time away from learning more specific work related material that could have a more immediate affect on my career.  I quit school and focused on IT Certifications.  I obtained several certifications including MSCA and MSCE for Windows 2000.

Then my brother-in-law shared with me the online college he was attending, Western Governors University.  For just under $3000 a semester, you can work on your degree at your own pace.  No traditional classes, no online blackboard classes, no required chat rooms or bulletin boards.  The Informational Technology degree they offer has several classes that only require passing an industry certification, many that I already had.

So I signed up.  I was able to ‘transfer’ my IT pedigree into my program, eliminating over a year from my schooling!  Well, I just finished two more classes in the last two weeks and I hope to finish my four year degree in less than a year.  If you want to get your degree, don’t enroll in a program that will costs you tens of thousands of dollars.  Go Western!

Don’t just take my word for it; WGU was recently featured in a Time Magazine article.  If you think you might go… let me know!

When did we start calling it Turkey Day?  Is it just too much to say Thanksgiving?  Are we just not thankful?  Maybe we feel guilty about not being thankful and call it Turkey Day to avoid the shame…

OK, OK, I’ll tone it down, pull it back a bit and just tell you that I am thankful for Blog Readers, The Internet, A government created to protect my God given right to free speech.  I’m thankful for having a job, having a roof over my head and having a car to get around.  I’m thankful for a lot of MATERIAL THINGS… but Thanksgiving is the one day people want to take the time to be thankful for the really important stuff like, My Wife, My kids – Zander, Lexi, and our lil’ bun in the oven.

Well, I say – we should take the other 364 days a year to appreciate the people in our lives.   For Thanksgiving, lets focus on all the crap we now have like computers, cars, clothes, china plate settings, backyard pools, and other temporal stuff like that.  Start thinking about thinks like cable TV, and Nintendo Wii’s, and all the money you have in the bank to go blow on “Black Friday” for trinkets, junkets, and the like.  You think that’s shallow?  Spending one day a year to look around our glutenous lives and be thankful for all the fat?

You know – I think you are right… It is shallow.  Besides when I think about all my crap I start to feel guilty that I have sooo much when there are people in the world dying of hunger… Nevermind… Happy Turkey Day…